


The Only Cure That Matters

by prairiecrow



Series: One Degree of Separation [6]
Category: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Genre: Established Relationship, Jealousy, M/M, Minor Injuries, Possessive Behavior, Robot Sex, Robots, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2012-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-19 17:27:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/575781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Allen Hobby has had a profoundly annoying day. Fortunately, Joe has some ideas about how to fix that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Cure That Matters

**Author's Note:**

> Set about eight months after the end of the movie's second section.

It was after seven p.m. when Allen Hobby finally returned to his suite at The Grand Hotel Minneapolis, his usually composed face set in a scowl of irritation that had been building throughout a day of frustrations both great and small. He practically slammed his keycard onto the bureau and shrugged out of his business suit jacket, tossing it onto a nearby chair without so much as glancing back at the mecha who had followed him into the hotel room. It was a measure of how disgruntled he was at the day in general that he didn't even want to talk to Joe, who had functioned as the perfect personal assistant all day long in spite of Frank Lovell's itchy hands and who was, really, quite blameless in every regard.  

The thought of Lovell almost brought an outright snarl to Hobby's lips. He appreciated receiving the respect and acclaim that was his due as one of the stars of robotic science, but outright sycophants annoyed him profoundly — and the senior sales rep for Cartier Distributing was as oily an example of an ass-kisser as Hobby had ever encountered in his long career. The displeasure of spending almost the entire day in meetings and at both lunch and dinner with the man certainly hadn't been diminished by Lovell's reaction to Joe: the rep had taken one look at the LX9, leered widely, and actually _winked_ at Hobby, as much as to say _Well, we all know what skills you picked_ ** _him_** _for, don't we?_ He'd then proceeded to spend the next several hours undressing Joe with his eyes and, on at least one occasion, actually making a grab for him — Hobby, prompted by some ancient instinct, had turned just in time to see Joe quick-stepping to one side and Lovell's right hand outstretched at waist level, with a smirk on his narrow face that made Hobby's blood, for a treacherous instant, feel like it was actually boiling in his veins.  

But Lovell was a man with his own power base, and one of the few people at the conference whom Hobby could not cut dead with impunity. So he'd swallowed the irrational urge to slam Lovell through the nearest wall for daring to trespass on what was clearly his, and it had ended up giving him a nasty case of emotional indigestion. 

No, Joe bore no responsibility for any of this. Still, Hobby hadn't said a word to him in the car on the way from the conference centre to the hotel, and he'd been equally chilly on the way up to the room they shared. Even Joe's keen unspeaking glances, which normally pleased him as signs of this mecha's exceptional intelligence, had today only perversely increased his general ill-temper.  

Still facing the window, he unbuttoned his vest and tossed it on top of the jacket — Joe would, after all, tidy them away and hang them up neatly later. He was just beginning to loosen his tie when the shower started running. 

Puzzled, he turned. "Joe?" 

There was the distinctive sound of a shower door opening, then closing. And no answer. 

"Joe!" His irritation with the day in general edged up a notch. Still working on his tie, he went to see what was going on. The bathroom light was on and hot water was running behind the opaqued shower doors, but Joe was nowhere in sight. The dove-grey jacket of Joe's business suit — he didn't wear a vest — was neatly folded and laid aside on the counter, with his pale blue tie tightly coiled atop it. 

It took Hobby a second to come to the logical conclusion. When he did, he practically ripped the tie from around his own neck and let it fall unheeded to the floor as he crossed the small room in two strides and pushed open the shower door. 

Joe was standing against the rear of the shower enclosure, fully clothed and dripping wet, leaning back against the tiles and running his hands sensually down his chest and belly and thighs as the water melded his clothes to his slim dancer's body (small dark nipples pressing against the white linen shirt, hard cock boldly outlined in clinging grey dress pants). His mouth was open a little, glistening with moisture, and his pale eyes silently begged — _Oh, please, come fuck me_ — as tiny droplets caught and hung, perfect as diamonds, in the dark spikes of his lashes. 

For another second Hobby simply stared, caught completely flatfooted. But only for a second — this wasn't the first time Joe had ambushed him with a tableau calculated to blow his self-control straight to hell. He leaped into the shower fully-clothed, pausing barely long enough to bang the door shut behind him before throwing himself into the lover-robot's arms. 

So close, in the heat and steam of the shower. Wet clothes on wet skin. Mouths clashing, tongues striving against each other, fingers gliding and grasping with hungry strength. The frustrations of the day faded rapidly to insignificance as he fumbled Joe's shirt open and shoved his hand inside, rubbing the smooth chest with its erect nipples, then slipping round to grope the mecha's strong slender back. Joe was making small luxurious sounds and pulling Hobby's hips closer to grind erection against erection, the clothing between them seeming to dissolve as the warm water washed over them.  

Hobby was starting to feel light-headed when he finally broke the pace of their devouring kisses and deliberately pulled back a little to look into Joe's eyes. Their brilliant green was darkened by pupils dilated as if with lust — merely an imitation of human responses, but Hobby found them beautiful anyway. 

Joe writhed subtly in his arms, a slow sensual stretch that ended with a smile and an attempt to recapture Hobby's mouth, which the orga deftly avoided. This prompted a winsome pout that was the calculated distillation of sexual frustration. His gaze settled on Hobby's lips again, the tiniest flicker of his lashes telegraphing his intention. 

"No," Hobby told him, with a sternness that was greatly softened by the affection in his gaze.  

Joe frowned fractionally and let his head rest back against the tiles, his half-closed eyes darting keen glances over Hobby's face as behavioural model algorithms cascaded through his sequencers. Hobby knew with reasonable certainty what was going on inside that sleek skull: Joe's primary processing path was trying to decide what his owner wanted him to do next (did he really intend to break off this encounter?), while the secondary path was calculating how to get what Joe wanted (more kisses and caresses of increasing intensity). 

But all Hobby really intended was to admire him for the moment, so he cupped Joe's face in one hand to hold the mecha still, tracing its gloriously full lips with his thumb as the friction of their cocks rubbing against each other slowed almost to a standstill. Even at times like this, Hobby could still briefly lose himself in Joe's exquisite artistry. Many mecha didn't stand up well to close inspection, but Joe had been one of the flagships of his line and no effort had been spared to assure that his derma was flawless, his shimmering eyes exquisitely shadowed, and every hair carefully and lovingly placed.  

Joe submitted the the inspection with apparent docility for a few seconds, then suddenly darted his head forward to catch Hobby's thumb in delicate sharp teeth. Now his eyes gleamed with a mischief that was not at all simulated as he held the human's gaze and drew the thumb slowly into his mouth, sucking the moisture off it in a way that sent a white-hot carnal shiver down Hobby's spine — and a flash of displeasure that made shaft flex against shaft in a sudden pulse of new sexual heat. Where had that little disobedience come from? The beauty of this machine was only the smallest part of its genius: he'd owned Joe for almost eight months, and the robot was still capable of surprising and intriguing him. 

Well, he knew at least one way to forestall another episode of sexual initiative. 

"Turn around," he ordered in a voice deeper and hoarser than any his students would have recognized. 

Joe obeyed, but slowly, releasing his thumb with a final teasing nip before spinning to face the tiled rear wall of the shower and assuming "the position", suitable to being patted down by a police officer. He had been thus examined several times in his career on the street, and one or two of those policemen, in consideration of letting Joe be on his way without further delay, had done exactly what Hobby was about to do — Joe's owners had believed that giving the beat cops a few freebies was just good business.  

Satisfied that Joe's hands and mouth were at least temporarily out of the game, he reached around and undid the front of Joe's pants, then hooked his thumbs into the waistband and slowly stripped them down the mecha's slender hips. Joe was of course wearing no underwear, so there was nothing but smooth slippery skin from his narrow waist to the first curve of his thighs, where Hobby stopped.  

Looking down, he admired the view for a moment. Joe's ass was just round and firm enough, cleanly cleft and delicious and the gateway to the most amazing delights: his own erection, well-conditioned, leaped and pulsed even hotter at the sight of it. He was still surprised that the contours of a male body could fill him with such carnal need — but this was mecha, not man, and he sometimes wondered if that played a greater role in his attraction than he suspected. Certainly his intimate knowledge of what lay inside this instrument of sexual delight did not in the least inhibit his enjoyment of it. 

He took tight hold of Joe's left hip and ran his right forefinger down between the robot's wet buttocks. Joe, forbidden from touching, pushed his pelvis back and opened his legs as wide as the constricting pants would allow, squirming at the intimate inspection as Hobby circled the small tight aperture to confirm that there was enough clearance above the top of the trousers to permit unhindered entry. The patter of falling water on those smooth buttocks, skipping and running down into the silken rift where the tip of his erection would soon be tightly pressed, suddenly filled him with a keen and urgent lust. 

"Don't make me wait," Joe breathed, tossing a pleading glance back over one shoulder when Hobby abruptly let go of him to attend to his own pants, "oh, you _know_ how I hate to wait!" 

Hobby chuckled, a little breathlessly. "Patience is a virtue." 

Joe rested his cheek against the wet tiles, gazing sidelong with bright eyes, and swivelled his hips wantonly. "I have never been particularly virtuous." 

"No, you're not." He slipped himself free through the front slit in his briefs (before Joe he had never needed such expediency), made sure that his shoes were squarely placed on the slippery bottom of the tub (he had no desire to slip in the middle of a thrust and break his neck), and reached down to wrap his left hand tightly around Joe's rampant shaft. "And I wouldn't have you any other way."  

Joe whimpered, pushing into his grip. At first Hobby hadn't been quite sure what to do with the mecha's penis, which was always hard by the time he got around to it. Once he became accustomed to its presence he found that it fit his hand quite nicely (no doubt because Joe was making minor adjustments to its dimensions to precisely accommodate his grasp) and was a useful handle for guiding Joe into position, as well as for holding him steady during the act of penetration. Certainly Joe enjoyed having it touched, and stroked, and in this particular case pulled upward as Hobby found his position, which required significant bending of his knees and a bit of guidance to bring his erection into proper alignment. 

He was quick and forceful on the first thrust, making Joe gasp and shiver in a way that suggested the piercing had hurt him, just a little. Even knowing that all human contact constituted positive input for Joe, Hobby still found this intensely exciting, and he withdrew almost completely to thrust hard again, all the way to the hilt and a little further, lifting the mecha almost off his feet -- and stopping there, with Joe pressed hard against the wall. 

"Ah!" Helplessly impaled, Joe tipped back his head, clenching his fingers on the tiles; his voice was a sweet ache of pleasure and pain. "Ohhhhh, Allen! Please —!" 

Hobby braced himself against the wall with his right forearm and crowded close, burying his face in the crook of Joe's shoulder to inhale his fragrance, kissing and tasting the moisture there as it mixed with that sweet pale musk. His legs were already starting to tremble with the exertion of supporting most of Joe's weight on his pelvis, but it was a glorious agony.  

"Please, what?" He found he could barely speak. In spite of the urgency boiling in his veins he wanted to play this out a little, to exchange hot whispers of need and desire; knowing that Joe was a consummate actor made the game no less satisfying. With the hand pressed between Joe's belly and the wall he gave the artificial cock a slow stroke, running his thumb over the slick swollen crown to make the mecha pretend to tremble again. "Harder? Deeper?" 

"Oh!" Joe almost sobbed, and promptly destroyed his owner's effort at self-control by rippling around him in a way that sent white fire through every nerve in his body. Through the blinding pleasure of his own surrender he was vaguely aware that Joe had just outmanoeuvred him again, but didn't care for the moment whether it had been accidental or deliberate: all that mattered was stepping back a little and letting the machine support its own weight again while he started using the full mobility of his knees and pelvis for the vital business of bringing himself to orgasm.  

For the first two or three strokes there was a problem with the angle of entry that he was too preoccupied to analyze, until Joe, with mecha-perfect balance, shifted forward, braced the toe of his right shoe on the narrow ledge where the bathtub met the wall, and leaned up a little on his other foot — and thus provided Hobby with the extra half-inch he needed for perfect comfort. He managed an inarticulate groan of gratitude that lapsed into gasps which proceeded, with increasing hoarseness, to a series of short sharp cries that he voiced between bites of Joe's strong, slender neck.  

As the final moan ground from his throat and the final spurt of semen pulsed from his cock he released Joe's erection and wrapped both arms around the mecha's torso, melding their wet, fully clothed bodies together as their intimately connected parts shared one last slow shudder, one last luxurious stroke. If there was any bliss on earth greater than this, he thought through the glow of subsiding ecstasy, he defied any man to show him what it was. All the frustrations of the afternoon were gone, washed away by the cleansing flow of pure, uninhibited pleasure that Joe always seemed able to inspire from him. He was only dimly aware of his left foot sliding sideways on the wet floor, only a few centimetres, not enough to cause any real concern. 

He was just pressing a warm smiling kiss of gratitude to the nape of Joe's neck when he heard a small sharp sound from somewhere around his knees: 

 _pop!_  

It took him a couple of seconds, however, to realize what it meant. 

************************************ 

Twenty-five minutes later he was lying on the hotel room's bed with his back propped up on three pillows against the headboard, dressed in his pajamas, his left knee tightly wrapped in a Tensor bandage and elevated on another pillow folded in half. Fortunately the hotel's mecha doctor wasn't inclined to ask awkward questions: if it found anything unusual in being called to one of the suites to find a fully clothed man lying in the bathtub, soaking wet, and attended to by an equally clothed and equally wet lover-robot, it had made no comment to that effect. Instead it had helped Joe strip Hobby naked, dry his owner off and get him to the bed, where it had examined his leg, diagnosed a mild ACL injury, and administered painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs before binding the joint and instructing Hobby to use the cybernetic leg brace which would be delivered to his room within the hour whenever he had to walk any distance.  

Hobby only hoped that the device would be streamlined enough to be easily hidden under his suit; the last thing he wanted was to have to field questions at the conference, in particular from a certain sales rep who had a dirty enough turn of mind that he might just end up guessing the root cause of the injury.  

"To hell with political expediency," he muttered as Joe brought him a cup of the hot chocolate that room service had just delivered: "One word out of turn from Frank Lovell, and he goes through the nearest window." 

"You don't mean that," Joe chided, handing him the cup and saucer, then sitting down on the edge of the bed as Hobby took the first sweet sip, briefly closing his eyes to better savour the warmth.  

"I certainly do — especially if he tries to lay hands on you again." 

"He won't manage it," Joe assured his owner with wide-eyed earnestness. "I'm really very quick, you know." 

Hobby had to smile at that as he turned to place the cup and saucer on the bedside table. "Are you? I hadn't noticed." 

Joe had learned to recognize when he was being teased, but on this occasion the mecha did not smile in response. Instead he deftly retrieved the cup and saucer from Hobby's hands and set it safely aside, sparing him the effort of fully turning and leaning over, then glanced down at Hobby's bandaged knee, laying a hand lightly on Hobby's left shin with supreme care. "I'm sorry," he said in a small voice, his green eyes rising to Hobby's face again, as solemn as a child's. "I only wanted to make you feel better. If I'd thought you were going to slip —" 

Hobby shook his head decisively. "It was my decision to make love to you in a bathtub," he insisted, trying to be just as grave, but a smile kept tugging at the corners of his mouth. "If I'd been thinking straight, I would have taken you to bed and ruined the sheets instead." 

Joe's gazed searched his face intently. "Then, you're not angry with me?" 

Hobby let the smile break fully free and took Joe's hands, drawing the still-damp mecha into his arms to press a kiss to that flawless forehead and guide Joe's sleek head to rest on his shoulder. "Trust me, Joe — even with a torn ligament to consider, you're still the best thing that's happened to me all day." 

THE END

 


End file.
